Techniques

Don't blink...

As the last word fell.

Chen Qiong Zhi vanished from the spot with a whoosh, moving too fast for the naked eye to perceive.

Right after that, a white streak suddenly shot forth!

In the blink of an eye, it swept past Li Yi, ruffling his hair, before coming to a steady stop behind him.

"Well? That speed and power were roughly the limit of an Initial Evolutionist. Could you see it clearly?"

Chen Qiong Zhi stood with her arms folded, perfectly composed.

Cai Xiaodong, watching from the side, swallowed. He could not see it—not at all.

Li Yi paused before saying:

"As expected of an instructor. I only noticed that your initial movement relied purely on force from your ankles, with no involvement from the rest of your body. And as you passed by me, your fingers swept once before my eyes, then you used two stomps to brake sharply."

The smile on Chen Qiong Zhi's face stiffened slightly.

"Not bad. You actually caught seventy percent of my movements. You only missed thirty percent."

Li Yi shook his head.

"I didn't see them. Based on the subtle movements of your body during the instant you started and stopped, I instantly constructed the corresponding movement model in my mind."

"Interesting. Is that the fundamental reason why you're always so at ease in battle and can easily predict your opponent's movements?"

"Yes."

"But when the speed exceeds your reaction speed, your predictive ability becomes useless, doesn't it? For example, although you just saw through my movements, you couldn't react because you aren't fast enough yet."

"Yes, Instructor. After all, I'm not an Evolutionist yet."

Li Yi nodded. Breaking limits and becoming an Evolutionist were two entirely different things.

Not an Evolutionist yet...

Chen Qiong Zhi felt as though he had just shown her up, and her teeth ached faintly.

But she quickly changed the subject.

"Since you still couldn't react to the speed of an Initial Evolutionist just now, I'll adjust the difficulty slightly. I'll spar with you using speed and power sixty percent greater than yours, and help you refine your techniques. How about it?"

"Then thank you very much for your guidance, Instructor."

Standard time, 10 PM.

Inside the training hall.

Cai Xiaodong yawned and could not help shouting:

"Li Yi, you're still doing extra training? Why are you still so full of energy?"

"Because I ate three extra pieces of high-energy Xeno-Beast Meat."

The Pluto Mech stood to one side, towering like a mountain.

Cai Xiaodong's voice reached it like the buzz of a mosquito.

However, the cockpit's information-gathering capacity was extremely high.

Even the faintest sound signals would be received and transmitted into the pilot's mind.

Although they would undergo a layer of screening and filtering.

The sheer volume still placed immense pressure on the pilot.

Li Yi's so-called extra training was essentially meant to acclimate himself to this long-term burden.

And to become skilled at extracting information useful to himself from this high-density flood of data.

The longer one stayed inside a Divine Mech, the more this acclimation would gradually improve the pilot's physical fitness and mental resilience.

It was just that the process was very slow.

Only by activating Divinity could the rate of physical improvement be accelerated.

Incidentally, activating Divinity could also increase mental strength, though the effect was far less remarkable than the improvement in physical fitness.

This was also why people with composite Divinity Sequences could end up stuck below the Celestial Rank.

Because mental strength improved far more slowly than physical fitness.

"You go back first. Same as usual, I won't be going back to sleep tonight."

As he spoke, Li Yi began activating his Divinity.

By now, he could skillfully activate and withdraw his Divinity at will. Each activation currently lasted about five seconds.

A bone-piercing chill suddenly swept toward Cai Xiaodong through the air.

The weather clearly was not cold, and his skin still felt warm to the touch, yet an indescribable coldness rose from deep within his heart.

Unable to suppress a shiver, Cai Xiaodong hunched his neck and left.

"No way, I can't compare to a monster like you. You trained barehanded with the instructor for an hour, and you still have enough energy to make the Pluto Mech move for over two hours. You're fucking inhuman!"

Inside the brightly lit cockpit.

Pluto Divinity drifted gently, shining into Li Yi's body.

A layer of dim, obscure light slowly flowed over his skin.

Five seconds later, the Pluto Divinity concealed itself once more.

Li Yi's body trembled as he slowly exhaled a breath of stale air.

At this moment, it felt as though his body had received a full-body massage. It was exceptionally comfortable.

"Today's gains weren't bad."

He could now maintain one activation of Divinity for five seconds and reactivate it after just a five-minute interval.

This was a new trick he had discovered.

Previously, the cooldown after five seconds would have been at least twenty or thirty minutes.

Now, he only needed to squeeze the redundant fragments of memory in his mind once, making his soul "float," and he could draw close to the omnipresent Divinity inside the Pluto Mech and activate it.

Several hours had now passed, and he had even exceeded his body's upper limit for radiation absorption, forcing him to stop activating it further.

"The weakness in activating Divinity has been more or less resolved."

"All that's left are the lack of a Divinity Technique and my slow activation speed."

"I probably can't solve the Divinity Technique issue in the short term. Next, I need to put more effort into capturing and controlling memories, shortening the activation time."

Finally, at standard time 12 AM, Li Yi completed the extra-training target he had set for the day and fell into a deep sleep.

Next, he still had work to do in his dreams.

A true 007.

The next day.

Inside the enclosed training hall.

Chen Qiong Zhi swept her gaze across everyone and slowly nodded.

"It seems everyone rested quite well last night. Your overall energy and condition are a notch better than before."

"Since the results are outstanding, we'll raise today's difficulty by another ten percent and push closer to your limits."

"I believe many of you still have strength left, with potential as rich as a mine still hidden away."

"Fang Tao, lead the warm-up! Gravity training begins in ten minutes!"

Chen Qiong Zhi was the same as ever, constantly ramping up the intensity for everyone.

While Li Yi was resting in the nutrition pod after completing the third round of gravity shuttle runs, he unexpectedly encountered Zhang Xuqiang.

"What a coincidence. Three days are up. Have you considered what I discussed with you before?"

When he saw Li Yi, Zhang Xuqiang reached out to stop him and spoke with a smile.

The harmless expression on his face made it seem as if their previous conflict had never happened.

"What a coincidence, Zhang Xuqiang. I was looking for you too."

Li Yi smiled. "After today's intensive training ends, I plan to start with the people ahead of rank forty-two, challenge them one by one, and keep advancing through the ranks until I reach you. Also, I can put up one minute of Divinity Radiation as a bet. My one minute against your two. What do you say? Do you dare?"

Zhang Xuqiang was stunned. "Did beating Zhang Qingjian make you swell with confidence?"

This kid had now seen the gap in rankings, yet he still wanted to fight him?

"What, didn't you personally say before that I had a chance of beating you? And now you think I'm getting cocky?"

Only after Li Yi said that did Zhang Xuqiang remember that when he had first met Li Yi, he had indeed said something similar in order to lure him into making a bet.

"No, no, that's great. You're welcome to challenge me anytime."

"Then let's make a contract."

"Also, besides challenging you, I need to challenge Zhang Wenqiang, Zhang Wuqiang, Zhang Xiao, Qian Tongyue, Qian Shaoyue, Gu Tianyi, and Chen Liji. Those seven are all members or collateral relatives of your Zhang family. As their big brother, why don't you get them to accept the wager too?"

What the hell?

This time, Zhang Xuqiang was completely stunned by Li Yi.

So confident? What was he trying to do?

Or was he simply too arrogant?